This personal essay was published by The Spinoff in April 2026. It explores my experience navigating financial relief with Inland Revenue, and the gap between how systems are designed to work and how they can feel in practice — particularly when illness, bureaucracy and financial uncertainty collide. At its heart, it is about dignity, discretion, … Continue reading The Cost of Proving You’re Poor Enough
This post follows on from an earlier post about a chain of medical appointments that followed the discovery of a cataract and retinal tear Link: A Superfluity of Appointments By this point I had already had one laser procedure on my right eye and was waiting to hear about the cataract in my left. I … Continue reading Navigating the Maze
Some weeks feel like a test of endurance. This one could have qualified for the decathlon. Monday: I had an appointment with the Eye Service at Outpatients, where I was told that despite months of being assured I qualified for publicly funded cataract surgery, I no longer do. The reason? The other eye is “too … Continue reading What a Week (From Hell)
For the past eight months it seems as though a week hasn’t gone by without some sort of hospital appointment … Nothing dramatic — no flashing lights or overnight stays — just a steady stream of visits, usually to Outpatients, for one thing or another. It all started with my eyes. To explain that properly … Continue reading A Superfluity of Appointments
